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Sunday, January 27, 2013

Happy (belated) Australia Day! As my regular readers know, I'm still out of the country recuperating from surgery, but I did want to do something to commemorate the occasion, so I decided to do a simple manicure in green and gold to celebrate. Unfortunately, I didn't have many polishes or any of my nail tools with me, so I was forced to wing it with what I did have on hand. Fortunately, I found an antique gold polish from Missha in shade HKH01 and a small bottle of some random forest green polish in my stash, so I decided to try my hand at my first 'framed' manicure.

The framed manicure consists of painting your nails as per norm, followed by layering a contrasting shade on top, leaving a thin border of the first colour to frame the second colour. I'm not completely satisfied with this manicure as it's not as neat as I'd have liked, but I did have some trouble with the polishes due to the brushes/formulas, so all things considered, perhaps it wasn't too bad an effort.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

Under artificial light.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

There you have it, lovelies, my first attempt at the framed manicure! I'd definitely like to attempt this again, but I'd probably leave a thicker border around the second shade and use more contrasting colours for added emphasis!

How did you celebrate the long weekend, lovelies? Get up to anything exciting? If you did a special post to commemorate Australia Day please leave me a link so I can come by and check it out!

Saturday, January 19, 2013

As promised, here are the nails I ended up wearing for Christmas! I was still recovering from surgery and feeling a bit under the weather, so I decided to brighten things up and get in the spirit by applying some sparkly, Christmas themed polish!

A couple of months ago, I discovered the wonderful world of indie polishes available on Etsy, and fell in love with the many gorgeous, home-made glitter polishes available! One of the stores I just had to buy from was called Pretty & Polished, and I fell in love with some of the polishes from her 2012 Christmas collection. I ended up purchasing a few mini bottles (which are perfect for when you are short of storage space)! I didn't have time to try them as I fell sick just after receiving them, but managed to pack a couple of the mini polishes in my suitcase to try for Christmas!

I did this look by overlaying Love Always, Candy Cain from Pretty & Polished over my favourite scarlet polish, Karina from Zoya. Love Always, Candy Cain is a gorgeous polish containing lots of chunky red and white glitter (in the shape of hearts and hexes), mixed in with red and white microglitter particles, all suspended in a colourless base. As a result, it works best when layered over contrasting colours. I can just imagine how gorgeous it would be when applied over black (to let the white and red really pop).

Love Always, Candy Cain by Pretty & Polished.

Close up of the bottle.

I did have to fish around a little to get a few of the larger chunky glitter bits placed on the nail, but overall, it applied very easily and laid quite flat on the nail bed, although there are a few places where part of the chunky glitter does stick up a little (as you might be able to observe from the photographs).

This manicure consisted of two layers of Love Always, Candy Cain, applied over two layers of Karina, and I used my standard Poshe topcoat. To allow for easier removal, I applied this over my Essence peel off base coat (PVA basecoat).

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In natural daylight.

In direct sunlight.

In natural daylight.

Isn't this just the most gorgeous glitter polish, perfect for Christmas? It really brightened my spirits and I received lots of compliments while wearing this!

In case you're wondering about removal, it was super easy with the peel off basecoat! All I had to do was grab an orange stick and gently prise it away from my nail, and I ended up with this!

Do check out Chels Pretty & Polished Etsy store page by clicking here, and her online store by clicking here, but I warn you, her polishes are so gorgeous that you just might find yourself 'accidentally' purchasing eight bottles, as I did! Her mini bottles retail for about $5, while her large bottles retail for about $9. I'm eyeing some of her colour changing polishes for my next order!

What do you think of this polish, lovelies? Do you love a good glitter topcoat as much as I do?

Friday, January 18, 2013

Happy 2013! I hope the new year is off to a great start for everyone! Before I go any further, I just wanted to say a big thank you for your lovely messages of support, via comments on my last post, email, Facebook and Twitter! It's so lovely to get a nice message from someone when you've been feeling a bit sick, and it really put a smile on my face to know I was missed! I even received a gorgeous little 'Get Well Soon' bouquet of flowers from my bestie, complete with some gorgeous flowers, cute little soft toys and an adorable smiley face balloon! I'm so blessed to have such caring people in my life, thank you all so very much!

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Adorable flower bouquet complete with balloon and soft toys!

I'm feeling much better now (although still not quite 100%) and I promise to reply to all the emails/comments soon! I'm sorry for the delay but I've been having some tech problems with my iPad so it's been a bit difficult. It's also been hard to stalk visit my favourite blogs/websites as often as I'd like, so I'm in withdrawal! I have been lurking around a bit but I promise to be more active once I'm back in Melbourne (in early February)! I can't tell you how much I'm missing my laptop!

It's amazing how feeling a bit under the weather can really make you feel quite crummy overall..I actually went a whole week with naked nails! That's the longest I've ever gone (yes, I'm guilty of not really giving my nails a breather in between paint jobs). I had a very quiet Christmas and New Year, which is a bit disappointing as it's usually my favourite time of year, but it was lovely to be surrounded by my family! I did, however, do my nails up for Christmas. I'll be publishing that post tomorrow so do drop by to have a look!

Although New Year's Eve was spent at my aunt's place, I made the effort to get dressed up, put on some purple smokey eyes (a review of the Isadora palette I used will be on the to-do list), and put on a party dress! It made me feel so much better and more myself just to put on a pretty frock, some makeup, and a pair of heels!

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Made the effort to frock up for New Years Eve, and
it made me feel so much better! Strapless bubble dress
purchased from Asos.

I also spent a whopping six hours yesterday getting my passport renewed. It's rather a long story but involved getting lost trying to find the new immigration office and watching a few dramas at the immigration office, but all ends well and I finally have my new passport in hand! I don't know why getting a new passport photo is always so difficult, but I do think that the instant photographs seldom flatter anyone (although having my hair frizz into a lion's mane thanks to the humidity also doesn't help...).

I only have two weeks left of my 'holiday', so I'm now running around and getting all the things I needed to do done (like shopping - can you believe I have barely bought any new beauty products?!). I did, however, manage to buy one of the new matte lipsticks from Bobbi Brown, which I've been coveting ever since they were released a couple of months ago, and I'm completely in love with it! I also bought a nude lip pencil because I somehow managed to leave Melbourne without packing any lip pencils!

They are so smooth and comfortable to wear, and they wear beautifully, leaving a lovely stain behind! It's honestly the best matte lipstick I have ever tried, and I have actually gotten my mum and cousin to buy a couple of these too! I will do a full review soon, complete with swatches.

I also managed to get my hands on six pairs of new shoes, practically all bought within an hour. It was on my first outing out of home after the surgery so I think I went a bit crazy (I'm going to blame being housebound for 3 weeks as my excuse). Two of them were practical shoes though, so really, it's more like buying four new pairs! :D

Is anyone interested in seeing photos of the heels? Well, to be honest, I'm probably going to share photos even if you aren't, because I am quite proud of my haul!

What have you all been up to lately, lovelies? I have missed you all!

Much love,
MM.
x

PS - A big thank you to all who have entered my International Christmas/New Year's Giveaway (and hello to all my new followers)! I have extended the closing date, as I had to postpone my trip back to Melbourne thanks to recovering from surgery, so it's not too late to enter if you haven't already! Remember, you can tweet once a day for extra chances (click here to enter)!

The Made Up Maiden is a Melbourne based beauty blog written by Nalini, a young professional with a great love for all beauty products (but is especially fixated on makeup, nail polish and fragrances).
Working in a male dominated industry by day, she moonlights as a beauty blogger by night, and is always on the lookout for new products to fall in love with! She loves exercising her creative side by showcasing various makeup and nail art looks on the blog.